Looking for advice on setting up breeding pens please

[Time-Out]

I overstepped, didn't I? It's the gherkins. I knew I shouldn't have put those in...

 

[Gypsy07]

Heheheh... No, it wasn't the gherkins... I was on night shift last night and I've been asleep most of the day. Forgot to check this post when I came in this morning at 9am. Sorry.

I love the pond graphic. Is that a bridge over the middle? Sadly I don't think the OH would be up for landscaping me a pond when we haven't even built a house yet! I also forgot to mention that he needs access to the field, and that we're in the middle of building another shed. See updated plan:

The crisscrosses are basically where we'll need to keep clear for access and parking of machinery...

The other thing is sizes: The area is probably bigger than it looks from the drawing. The yard, arena and sheds are all to scale as that was submitted as part of an official planning application, but the caravan, coop, and greenhouses were just my quick scribbles, and are bigger on the plan than they should be. To give you a better idea, the shed at the bottom right of the yard measures 60' x 30'. So 8 pens along the lines and dimensions of what you've suggested would be roughly two thirds the square footage of that shed. Which doesn't take up much space at all, when you look at the drawing!

I'm not sure why the land there is so wet. I think it might be something to do with the many tons of cow and horse manure that were ploughed into it a few years ago cause I wanted an area set aside for planting vegetables and my OH thought it would make the ground more fertile for sowing turnips. But he went a bit OTT with the quantities and I think that's maybe what caused it all to turn into a vast poo-bog... Another possibility is the septic tank which is located roughly halfway between the caravan and the concrete base of the blown-down greenhouse. You can see the ventpipe and inspection hatch at the bottom of the first photo. Yet another possibility is a burst field drain - the whole yard was originally a field and there are old clay drainage pipes crisscrossing it all over the place. Of these three I think the septic tank is the least likely one to be causing the problem.

I think I'll do some sounding out tonight on the idea of clearing that ground and trying to get it levelled.

 

[Time-Out]

Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. Of course you have a life.

I used the size of the concrete base to measure the runs lol. Based on the size of the shed, the whole will be tiny and could fit into a corner. You could make the runs a bit bigger then, maybe 15' x 20 or something. I feel like I'm hogging the thread. I apologise if I am. I love trying to come up with the perfect design. Thanks to BYCers, it's possible! It's just a shame my OH isn't half as enthusiastic about building it as I am...



And you guys have got to stop building sheds higgledy piggledy. They're getting in the way of chicken runs!

 

[Gypsy07]

LOL @ 'higgledy-piggledy'. That is exactly what our entire yard is! Sorry I didn't reply sooner but I kinda forgot about this thread as there's been so much else going on and I've been posting all over the 'Incubation' section about humidity, which is one of my favourite topics for giving long rambling explanations!

Also I have been busy arranging collection of the special birds who will be occupying the soon-to-be-constructed breeding pens. The road trip is on for next weekend, and I'm going to be super excited about it all week! The weather up here is so consistently vile that I won't be building anything in the near future anyway!

I'm thinking that to save money and allow me to get everything up and running reasonably quickly, I'm fairly sure I'm going to go with your layout of a central access corridor and runs on each side, but to start with I'll just get a few secondhand small chicken coops or old dog kennels and put one in the corner of each run. Then I'll add bigger sheds and the easily accessible nesting boxes bit by bit - as and when I manage to find cheap secondhand garden sheds for sale!

I'm hoping that our new shed will have enough offcuts of tin that I'll be able to use it for covering over the central corridor. I may have to leave that bit for a few months too. I also have a pile of polycarbonate panels that are the roof of a lean-to greenhouse, and they're just lying around doing nothing. I was hoping to rebuild the greenhouse but don't have a wall to build it against, so it's just going to be staying in bits for the foreseeable future. So I may use them to cover my central corridor which would keep it nice and light.

Please keep hogging! I love picking other people's brains about stuff like this.